User blog:LeMansRacer/World's Server Shards
Need for Speed: World is an MMOR game. That's an MMO as in Massive Multiplayer Online Racing game - a game that has for the past two years not seen much in the way of an expansion that would traditionally be seen in an MMO by this point. Maybe that's just because of Black Box, not as in anything they could have prevented or controlled, but maybe their team is just too small compared to the much bigger MMO studios such as Blizzard and NCSoft. Well, hopefully the recent rights transference of the Need for Speed franchise over to Criterion Games has set Black Box into a development frenzy. Maybe Need for Speed: World is what they've been tasked with crafting, growing and refining by EA or maybe it's just the whole timing of what is happening. 'Server Shards' Anyway, now World has received its biggest, broadest and most impressive step in the right direction. An aspect they're calling Server Shards. Server Shards are a series of separate servers to help manage the sync issues that players have been encountering for the past few months. Now this is a big step for Black Box as it places them out of its previous niche or even cult following of Need for Speed fans and into the light of the MMO fans. Compared to other games, Server Shards aren't anything new, in fact I'm quite stunned that the game didn't begin with such an aspect. Many MMO titles feature many different servers such as Guild Wars and World of Warcraft as they help keep the game running well. 'Problems' Here is my biggest problem with this update.... the community, I mean looking at the World forums today, I was appalled at the way the community was going on about this change. They have nothing to cry about in so many ways; *Everyone currently registered will be placed into the Apex server. *No-one is being forced into another server. *Online quality will gradually improve. *It'll bring in fresh competition. 'The Route' Of course what the community is seeing as a major disaster is that players won't be able to transfer their driver from one server to another. But, that's how things are in all MMO games - you stay on your server and play with that server's community. Obviously I have my own concerns with Need for Speed: World but I'm not sat behind a desk at the Black Box studio, so I can't really do anything... and that'll have to wait for another blog post. 'Side Note' As a little additional note, I'd like to wish a happy anniversary to those guys (and hopefully gals...) at the Need for Speed: World Wiki. They've worked well to produce a wiki site devoted souly towards Need for Speed: World. .... of course, if you want to know about the other titles in the series then you'd be better off coming back after reading up of NFS:W on their wiki. ;) Category:Blog posts